perdus et retrouvés
by mismatched madness
Summary: All Kiba, Karin, and Sakura had to do was retrieve a stolen scroll. It seemed like such an easy mission.  It was supposed to be.  /In which Kiba runs away, Karin is suggestive, and Sakura is absentminded.


_Dedication:_ TO STOVERRRR. Merry Christmas, darling~!_  
>Notes:<em> I apologize that this isn't supreme or anything. somuchdialogue,hannah,why. Howeverrrr, it was fun to write. =3 (lol, and watch me get the French wrong. OTL )_  
>Disclaimer: <em>Disclaimed.

.

.

.

* * *

><p><strong>perdus et retrouvés<strong>

* * *

><p>.<p>

.

.

Sakura, Karin, and Kiba—and Akamaru, of course—ran out of the enemy territory as fast as possible. They found that it was easier to make their way home in a forest; something the boy and pink-haired girl were used to.

"Did we lose 'em yet?" Kiba asked, not at all out of breath.

Karin nodded at the same time that Akamaru barked. She glared at the dog. (He asked a human, not a dog, _right_?)

"Hey, then let's stop here," Sakura suggested. She was worn out from punching through a wall and vault, simply to get a scroll. Even though she spoke those words, she didn't let up at all. Not until her companions agreed to her idea.

Kiba glanced out as his friend and chuckled. "Tired already, Sakura?" However, he came to a stop.

They all, including the boy and dog, seemed grateful for the respite. They all slumped down somewhere and just breathed. It was purely quiet.

Kiba found himself staring at his animal friend's muzzle. A red tint dirtied the typically white fur. The fight to get back their scroll was much more difficult than expected. Their different skills and personalities had made them careless.

Karin leaned against the tree with a heavy sigh. The former Hawk member must have read his thoughts because she soon spoke up. "Well, at least we got the scroll back."

"Thank God," Sakura murmured into her hands, relief washing over her. Once she composed herself, she lifted her head. "Kiba, let me see the scroll. Maybe I can break the seal on it."

Kiba nodded, still unnaturally hushed, and unzipped his flak jacket. He unbuttoned a pocket and stuck his hand through—_all_ the way through. He blinked.

There was a pregnant pause once again.

Sakura stared at him.

Karin pushed her glasses up.

"Kiba." Sakura stood up slowly. "Where's the scroll?"

Kiba gazed at his fingers poking through a hole in his pocket. He stared at Sakura, who was advancing towards him. He looked over at Karin, who was sending him a sharp look through her glasses.

"Where's the scroll?" Sakura asked again, this time with more force.

Kiba stood up, dusted himself off, and flashed the girls a smile. It threw them off, and they sent each other a questioning glance.

In that moment, Kiba turned on his heel and high-tailed it out of there.

It took too long for the tired kunoichi to make any true acknowledgement that the idiot had left them. And that he lost the scroll, too. They were simply, still, so tired.

"You know," Karin began, "he kind of reminds me of someone on my old group."

"Me too," the roseate agreed. "Although, I think everyone has at least one idiot on their team."

"I didn't particularly like that person."

"Neither did I," she said, though, now, she was okay with the knucklehead. Sakura cracked her knuckles lazily and found herself glaring in the direction that the mutt and Akamaru went.

Karin leapt across a few branches to get to Sakura's side. "So, what are we going to do? Go after him?"

"We don't have the super nose," she said. "He'll find us. Anyway, I don't have a clue where the hell we are."

After scratching a fleck of blood off her glasses, Karin jumped downwards. She concurred with the staying-where-they-were part because she knew that when lost, one _should_ stay put.

She heard a branch fall from the tree from above her, where Sakura was.

"Sorry," the girl mumbled.

Karin figured that Sakura felt just as stupid about not knowing where they were as much as she did. They were ninja, they had fought and_-slash-_or hung around Akatsuki, yet they had no clue where they were. It was degrading.

Soon, Sakura joined the redhead and smiled. "I have his food pack." Kiba couldn't last long without his food. And they both knew that even if he could, he wouldn't really leave the girls behind, either.

Karin found the pink-haired girl's grin to be contagious.

.

.

.

It was only a few hours before they both began to complain again (probably because Kiba's provisions weren't great, anyhow). Karin, especially, liked to make her objections known.

"Why the hell did they make him the captain?" Karin threw down some twigs she had gathered for a fire. "I mean, does your Hokage have something _wrong_ with her?" she asked Sakura pseudo-seriously.

The girl with the short hair laughed, shaking her head, "Well, sometimes I wonder, but I don—"

"And he _smells_ like a dog. Is that normal?" She sat down on the ground and took out some flint from her pack. "I bet he doesn't bathe," she mumbled.

"He's from the Inuzuka clan, Karin. Dogs are honestly their best friends." Sakura walked over towards the other girl and shoved a piece of parchment from Kiba's left-behind pack under the branches, hoping to help the sparks ignite. "And he does bathe."

Karin snickered, jerking her head towards the other girl. "How do _you_ know?" She winked conspicuously.

Sakura sputtered. "Everyone bathes! Well, not everyone, but most normal peo—Stop giving me that look!"

"Okay, Sakura," she said in a manner sounding as if she didn't believe said girl.

"Shut _up_~"

"I'm not saying anything at all." The condescending tone was not to be missed.

Just as Sakura was about to rip someone's hair out, Karin stopped abruptly and closed her eyes. "Someone's coming." They both stood and positioned themselves for a fight. The redhead wielded a kunai tightly, while Sakura finished pulling on her gloves. Their trained eyes watched as the bushes before them rustle and shake, ready for anything.

And out bounded Akamaru.

They stared at him for a moment, searching for any signs of oncoming danger; however, after a few silent seconds, none came and they lowered their guard.

"What are you doing here, dog?" Karin asked the animal, sounding disappointed.

"I hope you know that Akamaru can't answer you."

"Shut it." Karin flipped her hair over her shoulder and glowered at the canine. "I don't need to talk to it anyway because if Kiba is around, I can just sense his chakra."

Sakura simply stared at the girl. "Why didn't you do this before?"

She shrugged, "'Cause I thought that he'd come back sooner." She patted the dog's head awkwardly.

"…And I wanted to eat his food." Akamaru growled quietly at her last remark. Karin jumped backwards and went back to glaring at him.

Sakura didn't try to hide her grin. "Well, let's see if Akamaru leaves. If he does, you should keep an eye out on him—and for any other chakra signatures around him. We don't need to find Kiba just yet."

Karin nodded curtly, "All right."

.

.

.

However, a day later, it seemed that they didn't need to do that. (That was probably a good thing because the girls were pretty pissed by then.)

"Hey… Hey, guys," a familiar, and rather cautious, voice intoned.

"Kiba!" Sakura shouted, "You idiot." She stomped over towards him and automatically punched him. He moved to dodge, but he only succeeded in running his face into tree branches.

"Smooth," the other girl said from the other side of their makeshift campsite. She got to her feet and crossed her arms. "I'm not happy with you."

"Hey, hey! You, ladies, don't need to be rude here. I haven't been the happiest either."

The kunoichi just stared at him.

Kiba laughed nervously under their cold gazes. "I _was_ looking for the scroll."

"'Was,'" Sakura repeated.

"Yeah, but then I got hungry."

Karin said, unflappably, "I think Sakura's going to hit you again."

Kiba took a large step away from aforementioned girl, then continued, "But—But then I remembered something! I left my food pack with Sakura," his brown eyes glanced at the Haruno.

"And?"

"And I remembered that I put the scroll in there, too!" Kiba declared excitedly. "Not my pocket."

Karin's frigid façade faded as she let that statement sink into her mind. She almost laughed, "It's been here all along?" She went to retrieve the pack, but then she saw her fellow female's face. "Sakura?"

The girl with green eyes looked as if she was zoning out. She stared at nothing, but her wide eyes remained cold. "Shit."

"What's wrong?" Kiba questioned, stepping towards her.

Sakura's head turned towards them and she met Karin's eyes. "That fire we made yesterday? …Yeah, I might have used some of the scroll as a starter."

"And people call _me _stupid," mumbled Kiba as he picked up the pack he had left behind.

This time, Sakura's punch was one hundred percent accurate.

Karin scrambled over to where the campfire was and poked around, trying to find any remains of it. "It's all ash now," she confirmed.

Cursing again, the pink-haired person kicked a tree, putting a nasty dent in it.

"What's left of it, Kiba?" she inquired.

Still rubbing his bruised jaw, the boy found a little less than three-fourths of the scroll left. "Er. More than half?"

Karin sat down and peered at her friends. "That Hokage is going to kill us."

The two standing eventually found themselves sitting beside the red-eyed girl. The other female had the little-less-than-three-fourths of the scroll in her hand. She really probably shouldn't have been holding it so tightly.

"Well, comrades, it's been nice knowing you," Kiba said, addressing the others with a two-fingered salute.

"I'm not going to get another mission for weeks," muttered Sakura, dejectedly, ignoring the brunette.

Karin sighed. "Don't you get all upset, Sakura. Especially when it was clearly," she glared in the boy's direction, "Kiba's fault."

"What?" he exclaimed.

"You're _right_," Sakura beamed brightly.

"Of course I am."

"What—what is this?" he questioned.

They turned towards their captain and ordered him to lead them home, all the while grinning horribly. With his nearly supernatural nose, they wouldn't need any sort of map to get out of that godforsaken forest.

"This isn't fair, you guys!

"…_Guys_!"

.

.

.

"So, what was in that scroll anyway?" Karin asked as they took a break in a forest in Fire country.

Kiba shrugged, "I 'on' know."

"You two realize that no matter what was in there, Tsunade-shishou is _still_ going to murder us."

The second girl pushed Akamaru out of the way to sit closer to the fire (which they'd made certain not to use _any_ paper in starting it).

"…Yeah," mumbled the boy as he eyed his dog, still sleeping.

"I think that it might actually be better to stay lost in the woods."

Sakura laughed sleepily, "Yeah, probably."

.

.

.


End file.
